Inside Out: Poems

Inside Out continues Professor Jack Sanger’s poetic exploration of the human condition, shaped here by a deeply personal passage through illness and recovery.

Framed by poems written before and after, the collection’s core—its “inside”—emerges from time spent in hospital during hip surgery, a period of forced stillness and confinement. These central pieces form the living heart of the work: raw, reflective, and stripped to essentials.

Around them, the “outside” poems offer contrast and continuity—life as it was, and life resumed. Together, they trace a subtle but profound transformation, where body, mind, and spirit are reassembled through a Zen-like economy of language.

These are poems of interruption and return. Of fragility, endurance, and quiet awakening. Poems to sit with—and to see yourself within.